20 Pinterest Marketing Tips

20 Pinterest Marketing Tips

Pinterest marketing, it certainly has captured the imagination of internet and digital marketers from the day Pinterest unveiled itself to the social media world. With more than 16 million unique visitors every month, Pinterest is in the top five social media networks and rising very fast. Not only is the speed of its rise intriguing and fascinating; but the audience make up and its ability to drive traffic to participating sites have made it an important new opportunity for social media marketing— particularly for lifestyle type brands. But, the eternal question, where do you start? How does the Pinterest community work and what are the best practices for marketing your business on Pinterest? Well, you have come to the right place. MarketingModo is considered to be one of the top Pinterest marketing agencies in the United States and we’ve pulled out the top 20 tips for getting started and finding success as a brand on Pinterest.

Getting Started with Pinterest Marketing

1. Set up your brand page and Pinterest account. Back in the beginning, you needed an invite to Pinterest to join; but now you are free to join without the invitation. So head right over to Pinterest.com and set up your brand account.

2. Brand your Pinterest account. Choose a user name that is in alignment with your brand. Many brands actually just use their business name but others have had a great deal of success humanizing their accounts by using the name of an actual individual at the company. We believe this method is risky, what if the person leaves, so we recommend you set up a brand page. Upload your logo as your profile picture and fill out your profile.

3. Create your first pinboards. Think of the different types of collections that could be relevant to your business and set up initial pinboards. A good idea is to take a look at what some top brands and competitors are doing with their Pinterest pages. Use fun and appealing board names (e.g. Dream Bathrooms) that entice users and appeal to the aspirational nature of the network. Pinterest users are known for being aspirational and even somewhat whimsical so keep that in mind. You can start with just a few boards and expand as your engagement on Pinterest grows. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will you Pinterest marketing strategy be if you want it to work correctly.

4. Fill your initial pinboards. Fill up your initial boards with items and images from your websites and brands as well as pin some images from the boards of others. These images will help establish what your brand presence is all about when users first visit your boards. Use images and products that are visually appealing and diverse.

5. Begin curating. Jump into the Pinterest stream, browsing the categories relevant to your business and the ‘everything’ stream. Re-pin items relevant to your brand into your existing (or new) pinboards. Look for items that have already been repinned or items that have high visual appeal. Even if they aren’t your products, having items repinned will increase awareness of your account and generate followers and views for subsequent shares.

6. Connect with other Pinterest users. While you’re curating content and images for your boards be sure to follow users who share interesting and relevant content and comment on their pins where appropriate. This will help build awareness of your brand online and generate reciprocal follows.

7. Be consistent in your pinning schedule. Try to repin and add new content to your boards daily. The Pinterest stream moves quickly, so focused bursts will only been seen by a fraction of the people using the service. Dripping out content over time, on a more frequent basis, will result in greater visibility.

8. Cross-promote your social media accounts. Jump-start your Pinterest following by announcing and sharing your new account with your followers on other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, and via email. Also, place a link on your website. With the high traffic levels that your website receives you will find your Pinterest followers increase dramatically.

9. Have fun! People share inspirational and aspirational items. That is the point of Pinterest. People look ahead to what they dream about and share their passions. As a new Pinterest user, you should jump into this well of positivity with fun and an uplifting spirit. Share things that resonate with the largely female audience and appeal to those aspirational longings. Don’t get pushy with the sales or heavy hitting marketing. Those tactics will not work with this user group and there is no better way of turning your Pinterest oasis into a barren desert.

10. Get your employees involved. Pinterest marketing shouldn’t be the responsibility of a single individual. There’s a very good chance your employees are already on Pinterest. Ask them to contribute to your pinboards and ask their feedback on how to make your brand account one worth following. By getting them involved they’ll help repin and share your content with their followers, as well as surface great content for you to repin and share.

Engaging with the Pinterest Community

11. Share Interesting Content. If you remember any of these tips, the most important one is this: Sharing interesting content is the fastest way to gain an audience and build traffic from Pinterest. As a brand it is tempting to see Pinterest as a new place to advertise your entire product line. Many brands make this mistake. They launch a Pinterest presence, pin all of their products into pinboards and then cease activity. This shows a lack of understanding of the dynamics and audience of the site. Don’t make this mistake. Pinterest discourages excessive self-promotion. It’s important that brands participate in the community by re-pinning other user’s items. This creates awareness and good will for your brand on Pinterest, building your following.

12. Curating Interesting Pinboards. Users who find a brand via a pinned item on Pinterest will often review the brand’s boards for interesting collections before making a determination to follow the brand. Pinboards should be sorted by category, theme or interest and contain a mix of brand products and curated products. Segregating brand products into separate boards runs the risk of followers abandoning those boards while following the curated ones.

13. Avoiding Excessive Self-Promotion. This really cannot be overstated. Knock it off with excessive self-promotion. Pinterest marketing will drive more traffic to your site and ideally more conversions but this will only be the case if you don’t go overboard with the promotional aspect. Yes, it is marketing but it is smart marketing.

14. Finding and Following Users. In order to build a following on Pinterest, users must be aware of the brand presence on Pinterest. The easiest way to do this is to repin, like or comment on other user’s items. Repins, likes and follows generate email notifications to users, alerting them to your activity. This builds goodwill and also creates awareness of your brand account on Pinterest.

Advanced Pinterest Marketing Tactics

15. Running a Pinterest Contest. These work incredibly well. Do something like a ‘Pin It to Win It’ contest. Challenge other Pinterest users to create interesting pinboards or share content from your site on Pinterest and award prizes for the best boards. People will eat this up. Contests are a great way to generate a large amount of your content in the Pinterest feed along with plenty of links back to your site and product pages. It also is a great way to increase engagement and can even be a good PR piece.

16. Use Guest Curators. Just as you would use guest bloggers for guest posts on your company blog, ask a Pinterest power user to play guest curator for a week. By reaching out to Pinterest users with large followings already, you can leverage their popularity by creating awareness for your account. A rising tide lifts all ships.

17. Create Fan-curated Boards. With Pinterest, you can make any pinboard open to contributors. User-generated content or in this case, fan curated boards are incredibly popular and are a great method for connecting with your fans and engaging with your Pinterest community. Invite your brand fans and followers to curate some of your boards for you. Not only will this take some of the board building off your shoulders but this is also a great way to invite brand-loyalists to participate, creating a deeper connection between you and the customers who already care the most about you.

18. Add a Pin It button to your website. This is very, very important. If you have a product-oriented website with lots of great visuals, you can add Pinterest’s ‘Pin It’ button to your website. It works just like a Facebook Like button and allows users to quickly share your content across the network by adding it from your site to one of their pinboards.

19. Optimize Your Pin Copy. Pinterest collections are starting to surface in Google and Bing organic search results and this will likely only increase in time. Each Pin has up to 500 characters of copy that can accompany it. Be intentional about your Pin copy and optimize it for relevant keywords to gain extra organic rankings on important words for your business. Yes, SEO has a role to play with Pinterest marketing!

20. Get Charitable: Recently the social media community has been buzzing with charitable activities such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. While primarily focused on video social networks like YouTube, many brands have developed charity related pinboards to spread awareness for a particular charity. Not only is this good social responsibility but it also humanizes your brand and business.

Conclusion on Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest is a dominant social marketing space. It’s large, predominantly-female audience and focus on products and consumer goods make it an appealing for web and social media marketers. If your brand is aligned with the type of content that Pinterest users like to share it can be a powerful driver for brand awareness and referral traffic back to your websites. As Pinterest grows and evolves the opportunities will also change for brands; but right now, the site has captured the imagination of the women everywhere, and opportunistic brands are using it as a fresh, new opportunity to talk to the most important segment of the consumer market. Use our guide to help get your business up and running on Pinterest. And if you need help with Pinterest or your social or online marketing strategy don’t hesitate to contact us at MarketingModo. We’d love to help.

Tom Ford heads up Digital Strategy for MarketingModo. He works with the agency team to explore the boundaries of digital for MarketingModo clients, utilizing all the tools and channels available to create perfect digital journeys.

A native of Pittston, Pennsylvania in the heart of hard-coal country but frequenting Frederick, Maryland, Tom considers himself a "Pennsylvanlander". On the weekends, you can find Tom hiking, curled up with a good book or plotting his next international escapade.